DAY two of the Daniel Morcombe committal hearing has begun. Follow the hearing with our rolling coverage.

3.45pm: The next witness to give evidence was Senior Constable Michael Kelly, an officer with the Brisbane Scientific Section in the major crime unit.

Sen Const Kelly, who has qualifications in archeology and paleoanthropology, was asked to help police search a crime scene in the Glass House Mountains on August 11 and 12, 2011.

The officer helped to supervise SES volunteers and come up with "search strategies" but nothing of note was found on those days at that particular crime scene.

But in a report, Sen Const Kelly said some of the skeletal remains were found where they were because it was "consistent with scattering by animal scavengers".

Other remains were not far enough away from "clusters" of bones to indicate animal activity, he said.

Daniel Morcombe.

3pm: A forensic police officer has told the Brisbane Magistrates Court he was asked to examine a mulcher for traces of blood in the investigation into the murder of Daniel Morcombe.

Senior Constable Ashley Huth, a forensic officer and the fourth witness to give evidence on day two of the committal, was asked to examine a Mitsubishi Pajero, a mulcher and a pair of shoes in 2011.

No DNA, blood or anything of "evidentiary value" was found in either the mulcher or the Pajero, the court was told.

"You didn't recover any blood, hair, fibre, that was relied upon as ever having come from Daniel Morcombe," Michael Bosscher, for accused Brett Peter Cowan, said.

"You were as thorough as you could possibly be."

"Yes, that's true," Sen Const Huth answered.

The officer was able to determine the make and model of the shoes, as well as confirming they were a matching pair.

12.33pm: Witness Sergeant Donna MacGregor said scientists wore face masks, hair nets, full body suits and gloves when handling bones at the John Tonge Centre during the autopsy process.

But Mr Bosscher said conditions weren't always so pristine - with SES volunteers and police cadets wearing only gloves while sifting through dirt at the crime scene.

Sgt MacGregor said it was up to her to "come down the line" and examine any finds to ensure they were bone.

She would then "package" anything she identified as being bone.

"We were trying in all circumstances to mitigate any DNA contamination," Sgt MacGregor said.

The bones were then handled during the autopsy process in a clean environment.

"So in order to conduct a thorough examination ... it's something that needs to be in your hands that you look at, that you move around etc," Mr Bosscher asked.

"That's correct, yes," Sgt MacGregor said.

Some photographs of remains showed small bone fragments which broke as they were exhumed from the soil.

Sgt MacGregor said some of the bones were so fragile, nothing could be done to keep them in tact.

"With all the care in the world, they were still breaking in your hands as they were being removed from the soil," she said.

12.11pm: Witness Sergeant Donna MacGregor, a scientific officer who works for Queensland Police Service and the Queensland University of Technology, was called in to assist as officers searched the Glass House Mountains in 2011.

She told the court 17 "skeletal elements" were recovered during the search, including part of a right hip, a rib fragment and vertebrae fragments.

Sgt MacGregor said she could tell the remains were at least five-years-old and belonged to a young person.

She said markings on bones, called ''muscle markings'' gave an indication of the size of someone's muscles, which in turn suggested the size or age of the person.

''In this cases, the muscle markings were very small,'' Sgt MacGregor said.

She estimated the bones belonged to someone aged between nine and 12 1/2.

''In this case it (the skeletal remains) was only partial, so we only had a limited surface we could use,'' Sgt MacGregor said.

The court was shown photographs taken during the autopsy of a fibula, a tibia and a humerus that had ''suffered some damage'' and ''eroded away'', which Sgt MacGregor used to show different markings.

She explained how they help with the identification process.

She said she had no trouble identifying the tibia, despite the fact that ''each end of the bone is missing''.

11.40am: The second witness to give evidence, Sunshine Coast Detective Sergeant Graeme Farlow, has taken the stand to talk about his involvement in the investigation.

The court heard Det Sgt Farlow was involved in the initial investigation and was reassigned to the case in 2011, when he was given the role of crime scene manager.

At this time, search teams were sifting through mud, creek beds and foliage at three different crime scenes in the Glass House Mountains.

The detective was responsible for calling in a long list of experts who provided police with assistance on everything from wildlife activity to water movement during the Queensland floods.

''I was asked to bring in a hydrologist, so I made the necessary inquiries with the local council,'' he said.

Later, police brought in two geomorphologists - experts who gave advice on how far search crews would need to dig to reach the soil level from 2003.

Mr Bosscher said the detective was the person tasked to get the samples from the crime scene to the lab in New Zealand.

''I was the carry person, yes,'' Det Sgt Farlow said.

10.21am: Ms McGovern said a separate gender test on the humerus bone was not able to confirm whether it belonged to a male or female.

A DNA test on the bone fragment only resulted in six out of 26 results, the court heard.

But Ms McGovern said this was enough to provide an analysis.

Mr Bosscher said Ms McGovern's report suggested the partial profile was 540 times more likely to have come from Daniel than another Queenslander.

''So if we had 1080 Queenslanders, you should replicate the results once?'' he said.

''I'm not happy to explain the statistics in that form,'' Ms McGovern said.

Mr Bosscher said he had heard of results where DNA was a billion times more likely to have come from a particular person.

9.53am: Mr Bosscher said the laboratory had used a low copy number technique, which he argued was problematic.

''The low copy method is extremely sensitive,'' he said.

''It flows then that it is the one that is most prone to contamination and therefore error.''

But Ms McGovern said strict controls were put in place to counter any risks.

''This is why it must be done in a strict, controlled and clean environment.''

Ms McGovern said it was such a sensitive test that even speaking over it could lead to contamination.

She said scientists worked behind a screen, wore hats, face masks, glasses, lab coats, booties and two pairs of gloves to control the environment.

''I have an image in my mind of a James Bond movie where you are all in semi space suits,'' Mr Bosscher said.

He said that meant there was a real risk that the sample could have been contaminated prior to reaching the lab.

''Prior to coming to your laboratory, if it has been touched, looked at, spoken on, breathed on, put into a container, taken out...whatever might have happened to it before coming to your laboratory, could have an impact prior to coming to your laboratory,'' Mr Bosscher said.

''Yes,'' Ms McGovern said.

9.37am: Day two of the Daniel Morcombe committal hearing has begun with expert testimony from forensic scientist Catherine McGovern, appearing via video link from New Zealand's Institute of Environmental Science and Research.

It was here that police sent a section of humerus bone to a laboratory to determine whether it belonged to the 13-year-old murder victim.

Brett Peter Cowan has been charged with luring Daniel from a Sunshine Coast bus stop and killing him before hiding his body in the Glass House Mountains.

The court heard the partial bone was identified as belonging to the teenager.

Ms McGovern said she was given a toothbrush belonging to Daniel which was used to extract a DNA sample.

That DNA sample was then compared to DNA from the bone fragment.

But she told the court the first test only provided a partial DNA profile.

Two different tests were undertaken - and the results combined - from a second sample from the toothbrush to get a full profile.

Michael Bosscher, for Cowan, said Ms McGovern had combined two different testing techniques to get a ''composite'' profile.

''The results were combined,'' he said.

''I'm not suggesting for a minute that you combined the actual physical samples.

''What I'm suggesting is you've combined the results.''

Ms McGovern said the combined result was consistent with the partial sample obtained from the first test.

She said it was clear enough that she did not need to use DNA samples taken from family members to use as a comparison.

Earlier, a woman has told a Brisbane court she watched uneasily as a boy wearing similar clothes to Daniel Morcombe walked over to a "smiling man" who enticed him into a car on the day he disappeared almost a decade ago.

Witness Marie-Ann Cummins told Brisbane Magistrates Court she was a passenger in a car driven by her husband when they passed the Sunshine Coast bus stop where 13-year-old Daniel was last seen on December 7, 2003.

She saw one man standing next to a blue car, which had pulled over on the side of the road, and the "silhouette or shadow-shape" of another person waiting in the vehicle.

"He was smiling and inviting and I saw the child walking to the car," Ms Cummins said.

"He realised that I was watching. He looked in my direction."

Yesterday, Brett Peter Cowan, 43, was clean-shaven and neatly dressed in the dock at his committal hearing after he was last year charged with Daniel's murder, child stealing, deprivation of liberty, indecent treatment of a child under 16 and misconduct with his corpse between December 7 and December 25, 2003.

Three witnesses gave evidence before Chief Magistrate Brendan Butler during the first day of the hearing, scheduled to be part-heard over the next fortnight and to resume again in February.

North Coast Regional Command Forensic Services Co-ordinator Inspector Arthur van Panhuis told the court police identified three main crime scenes on an overgrown property once used for sand mining off Kings Rd at the Glass House Mountains.

Photos revealed heavily treed terrain, thick lantana, dams, wells, steep ridges, a man-made berm, creek beds and steep inclines, rubbish piles and even old tobacco drying sheds, all of which were searched by police and SES over two months from August last year.

He revealed police found bone fragments, including a tibia belonging to Daniel,Rip Curl shorts, a pair of his Globe sneakers, a belt and underwear.

Insp van Panhuis said experts who assisted police included a channel morphologist, who studies water movement, a hydrologist, animal behaviorists, and Department of Fisheries staff to provide advice on marine wildlife.

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